United States President Donald Trump does not hide his admiration for Mount Rushmore and his desire to join the Busts of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
During his first term, Trump told Kristi Noem – then US representative for the South Dakota, now internal security secretary – that his “dream” was to be on Mount Rushmore. Later, she gave Trump a model of Mount Rushmore with his face.
The idea has risen since Trump returned to power earlier this year. Still in January, a Florida congressman presented a bill to “order the Interior Secretary to provide the sculpture of the figure of President Donald J. Trump at the Mount Rushmore National Memorial”. The bill was then sent to the House’s Natural Resources Committee, which has not yet commented.
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Already in March, the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, said in an interview with Lara Trump, daughter -in -law of the president, that “they definitely have space” for Trump’s face on Mount Rushmore.
Is this possible?
As with Trump related to everything, it can be difficult to decipher the difference between everyday rhetoric and future actions. But those responsible for the memorial are taking this initiative seriously.
The National Parks Service, which supervises the Mount Rushmore National Memorial and is currently led by Burgum, cited two reasons why the most faces cannot be added. First, it considers Mount Rushmore a complete work of art. Second, there is no space. “The sculpted part of Mount Rushmore has been carefully evaluated and there are no viable places available for new sculptures,” the parks service said in a statement.
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These are the foundations of the debate, now and in the future. One is philosophical. The other is geological. One is a matter of “should”; The other is a matter of “could.”
Mount Rushmore is a cultural landmark, an American abbreviation for the best of the best. “Who belongs to Mount Rushmore?” It is the opening for a debate on any specific subject, as if we could sculpt such a monument in honor of athletes, musicians or writers.
But the real question is the presidents. Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor who projected the huge sculptures and supervised its construction for 14 years from 1927, chose the four presidents and their accurate locations.
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What would he think of Trump? And where would you put it?
He was a historian named Doane Robinson who dreamed of Black Hills sculpted faces as a way of attracting tourists. He imagined Faroeste heroes such as Wild Bill Hickok and Sacagawea in Torres along a winding road in an area called Needles.
Borglum was recruited. A talented sculptor, he fell in love with Mount Rushmore’s wider landscape, a name given in honor of a New York lawyer who explored tin mines in 1885. “A granitic rock mountain that rose above neighboring peaks,” Charles Rushmore at the time.
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Borglum soon focused on honoring former presidents to represent the first 150 years of the nation. Now, the United States is a year of age 250, and those who want to preserve the memorial are nervous about the motivations of those who can change it.
“You would not add another face to Mount Rushmore de Borglum, just as you would not add one to Da Vinci’s’ last supper”, “Dan Wenk, who was superintendent of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial from 1985 to 2001.” But I recognize that these types of ideas are no longer out of the question. “
In the past, some have pressured Franklin D. Roosevelt and others for John F. Kennedy. The strongest pressure so far was in the 1990s by Ronald Reagan.
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The idea of amending Mount Rushmore disappeared until Trump himself suggested it. It is a provocative idea. Historians recently classified him as one of the worst presidents of American history, while the four on Mount Rushmore are all in the top five.
But many are taking Trump’s ambitions to Mount Rushmore seriously. Theoretically, the president could instruct his government to sculpt his face there. Given his propensity to undermine the norms, who guarantees that Trump would not find a way to undermine Mount Rushmore?
“Fortunately, from my point of view, not just for Trump, but for everyone else, they are fighting the rock’s reality,” Wenk said.
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Could another face go there?
The answer is no, according to geologists and those who studied Mount Rushmore. Or at least not probably. Unless there is an inventive approach, such as holograms, but a new face is unlikely.
Stopped in front of Mount Rushmore, as they do about 2.5 million visitors every year, it is easy to imagine where other faces can be carved.
Even Borglum’s first views for Mount Rushmore were denied by the secrets inside the rock. Most of Mount Rushmore is granite – Harney Peak Granite, a name given in honor of the highest mountain of Black Hills – but also has veins of other less sculpable rock types.
For example, the initial plans of Borglum predicted torsos, not just faces, from the presidents. But these plans were discarded when he discovered the dark, scale and layers under the lighter color granite, inappropriate for sculpture.
The most complicated of sculpting on Mount Rushmore, however, can be the tangled web of cracks, cracks and chips of various sizes and depths. Many are visible.
From 1989, scientists evaluated the stability of the rock and mapped 144 fractures and other discontinuities in the four faces and around them. The intersection of fractures creates blocks, or large pieces, similar to the glass shards of a broken windshield.
In 1998, a network of meters was installed on Mount Rushmore to monitor cracks and blocks. The concern is not so much with seismic activity (unusual in the region) and the movement of rocks during freezing and defrost cycles, both seasonal and daytime. Horizontal cracks are mostly sealed to prevent water from entering, while verticals are left open to allow water drainage.
“One of the concerns about an additional face is that these fractures can be activated,” said Paul Nelson, a geomechanical engineer who spent years overseeing the rock block monitoring system on Mount Rushmore. – If you remove material, you may be removing support.
‘Very difficult, if not impossible’
In other words, he stressed that a new face next to Lincoln could cost his nose. Nelson concluded that it would be “extremely difficult, if not impossible, to sculpt an additional face on Mount Rushmore.”
In this age, imagination is being expanded and no idea can be discarded, even on Mount Rushmore. Is it possible to sculpt smaller versions of presidential heads around the current ones? Perhaps, although no one is proposing a 3 -meter Trump head in Washington or anywhere else.
Would it be possible to fix a prefabricated sculpture on Mount Rushmore? If parts of the rock are not strong enough to be carved, they will probably not be strong enough to support something. A cubic granite foot weighs about 77 kg. Another material, if it could be fixed, would age differently, and other problems.
How about turning one of the current faces into someone new? It is not impossible, but those who want to see Mount Rushmore protected are comforted that all four presidents who inhabit it remain popular and in good position.
Perhaps more likely than a fifth president on Mount Rushmore are other ideas already in progress. Trump himself proposed a national garden of American heroes, with sculptures to honor 250 Americans. Your government already has a list of possible honorees, but not a place for them. Southern Dakota officials are promoting Black Hills as a home, overlooking Mount Rushmore.
Another group is proposing a sculpture garden and a Black Hills Learning Center, with the aim of “preserving all the chapters of American history” that may be aligned with the president’s view. A monument to Trump can be a work of art from one of these nearby projects instead of staying on Mount Rushmore itself.
Robin Borglum Kennedy, Borglum’s granddaughter, is vehemently against any change in the mountain, now or the future. She sees Mount Rushmore more as a historical memorial than political. After all, his grandfather chose four men who were already dead.
“It was conceived as a tribute to America’s ideals, not a particular man,” Kennedy concluded.
